Sounds and Pictures in Words: Images in Literature for Young Adults

Connie S. Zitlow

The capacity of the human being to evoke images of things or
events not present, and even never experienced, or which may never
have existed, is undoubtedly an important element in art. It is
especially important in speech and verbal text [and] is
basic to any kind of verbal communication. (
Louise Rosenblatt 1978, 32
)

Literature is one of the arts, and reading literature is an
artistic, or aesthetic, experience that has something in common
with such other aesthetic experiences as listening to music,
watching dance, or looking at paintings. (
Bruce
E. Miller 1980, 3
)

Students can learn a great deal from experiences with literature
that has powerful imagery, works written artfully by an author who
is willing to test the boundaries of the genre, works that require
the same type of thoughtful contemplation and effort one uses when
viewing a piece of visual art. Why then should teachers ignore the
imagery in a body of literature that is available to a generation
of students who view and listen everyday?

An important way we as people think and learn is by using
images, such as visual connections and sound associations. The use
of images, or imagery, is a primary underlying structure in
language, media, and mind. It is a basic element in communicating
and creating, an integral part of thinking, speaking, listening,
reading, and writing. "Language and images are inextricably linked
-- in how we generate them, how we make meaning from them, how we
use them, and how we remember them" (
R. Fox x
).
We think in flashes and bursts of images, in descriptive fragments
that are like "Lights in the Windows" (
Nye
).
Images point to the nature of our human condition, to the
experiences we remember, visualize, and come to understand as we
stabilize them in the acts of reading and writing.

The words we read and the images we see are abstractions of
reality, selected and crafted by someone. Imaging, or the act of
experiencing mental images, because it is broader than visual
imagery, is connected to all the senses. When someone else chooses
words carefully and crafts them so that we see a vivid picture in
our mind's eye, or we hear a distinct and recognizable sound in our
mind's ear, or we smell a certain scent, we are responding to an
element of the written work that contributes to its literary merit.
Such a work moves beyond being just a form of representation to
being an artistic piece. The powerful images -- vivid pictures,
clear sounds, poignant smells -- evoked by the words in
well-written literature are examples of an artistic dimension that
contributes to a piece of literature's endurance over time.

One criterion used to determine if a literary piece is
considered to be an artistic work is whether it succeeds in evoking
in the mind of the reader vivid, lasting images that contribute to
a feeling of possibility, even of believability. Producers of
visual media know a single compelling image is hard to erase. The
same is true for print media. As Fox points out, there is a very
close link between the ability to understand the inferences of
pictured subjects and inferences of the written page -- a crucial
aspect of both visual and verbal literacy. Understanding the power
of imagery is also essential for understanding the aesthetic
elements that comprise artistic works.

Imagery --- the Artistic in Literary Works

"The artistic treatment of any form of representation is a way
of creating an impact, of making ideas and images clear, of having
an effect on those who Ôread' the form" (
Eisner 149
).

In their many works, Elliot Eisner and Maxine Greene focus on
what we mean when we talk about art, the aesthetic dimension of
works, and what can happen when we participate with art. The word
"art" can be used to indicate things that are produced as a form of
representation; it can mean the process of bringing something into
existence, and it can mean an artistic product that possesses
certain valued features (
Eisner 150
).
Participation with works that, because of their excellent features,
are considered to be artistic products, such as novels, poems,
films, paintings, and photographs, can make aspects of the world
more vivid. We have the opportunity then, according to Greene, to
be awakened from our stock responses to a stance of what she calls
throughout her work as "wide-awakeness" (
Greene
). As a result, we see the world and others in
new and different ways. Artistically crafted works, because of
their capacity to generate in us a sense of empathy, can help us
develop an understanding of those we do not know (
Eisner, 151
).

Eisner believes the arts, including literature, are our most
powerful means for making life in its particulars vivid. By
directing our attention to individuality, the images we encounter
in literature locate us in the particular that is at the same time
general or universal. Such an encounter occurs because of the
paradox created in these works in which what is universal is
revealed as the particular is examined (
Eisner 152
). A person's experience is brought alive
on the page, not explained or analyzed, but rendered, as Peter
Elbow states in his discussion about narrative thinking (
189
).
Readers experience meaning through the elements that contribute to
the literary qualities of narrative, namely the metaphor, imagery,
dialogue, and description in the written work.

Thus the pictures and music in literature, with its nuance and
figurative language, make possible certain kinds of experiences,
because ideas that become fixed in a public form such as in a
literary work, have not only been realized by the creator, they
have been stabilized, refined, edited, shared, and have the
potential to influence others and be enjoyed by them. Many authors
use vivid phrases to clarify what literature can do. Tom Romano
talks about the power of encountering a piece of literature that
has the potential to "turn our head around." As he says,

we see and learn and connect through story I
love the small successes that come with picking the right word,
following a line of language in argument and image, perceiving a
new idea, seeing meaning emerge from flash of memory or chaos of
data. And I come back to reading literature again and again because
it enhances my thinking, lets me think the unthought, and
illuminates my intellectual, emotional, and physical experience.
(
16-17
)

Those who purport to bring adolescents and literature together
must re-experience the effect that the artistic language in
literature can have on their own lives. In his book
What a Writer Needs,
Ralph Fletcher talks
about beautiful language as "truly original language, images that
make you sit up straight when you're reading" (
139
), "images that
take our breath away and allow us to see the tired old world with
new eyes" (
141
). Fletcher believes teachers can help writers
revitalize the language in their writing by first attuning their
ears (and I add, their eyes, in fact all their senses) to magical
language wherever they hear it. If we want learners to realize that
language can be used in many ways and can accomplish many things,
it is important to exemplify such language and to provide
opportunities for readers to participate in discussions about the
imagery in specifics works of artistically-created prose.

In the Classroom - the What and How of Literature

There are classrooms in which teachers encourage students to
talk and write about their feelings prompted by a story and about
their ideas concerning the plot, character development, dialogue,
setting, and themes of a work. Most students, however, find it
difficult to make observations about the
craft
of an author.
Their explorations about how an author created the work to evoke
readers' feelings about a character and their thoughts about issues
raised by a story are often shallow or missing. Teachers,
therefore, who want to validate a piece of literature, such as a
classic work that students do not understand or appreciate, often
resort to lecturing about the aesthetic qualities of the work.

There are, however, notable teachers who know that readers who
initially see, hear, and feel nothing but the pages of a book can
learn to see more than words on a page (
Miller 15
). Milner and Milner agree that it is
important for teachers to focus on ways to deepen readers' insights
into literature by reflecting on an author's craft. Linda Rief
surrounds her students with the works of great writers and asks the
students to consider
what
these writers do and
how
do
they do it. Together they study select passages and collect pieces
of language in logs to see how authors see with a painter's eye and
hear with the ear of a musician. She invites them to participate in
a work by using visual images, voices, and words to show how they
see the extraordinary in the ordinary and make sense of their
worlds. Rief's book
Vision and Voice
includes examples of her students' art: their writing, drawing,
storytelling, and musical creations. Her work is an example of what
Miller emphasizes: "teaching literature ought to grow out of the
teacher's and students' reading of it an outgrowth and
continuation of their reading, not something apart from it" (
Miller xv
).

It is important to remember that imagery plays a reciprocal role
in the writing process, influencing how writers choose grammatical
structures to create images, and images shape the writers' choices
of grammatical structures. Harry Noden designs lessons to raise
students' level of consciousness about image by asking them to "use
notebook paper for canvas and words for paint" (
155
) and to think
about the grammatical choices they make as brushstrokes. He finds
that as students begin to see and hear better what words can do,
they think and write better.

Imagery in Young Adult Literature

Traditionally English teachers have been committed to teaching
literary works in which students are exposed to the beautiful
language of "classic" literature. Although there are numerous
examples of contemporary literary works with rich figurative
language -- works that are accessible to young readers -- many
teachers assume the aesthetic dimension of literary works is not
available in books classified as young adult (YA) literature. Yet
authors of the best YA books use the same literary techniques as
the authors of outstanding books for adults. It is critically
important for teachers to recognize that many YA novels are well
written, carefully crafted, emotionally powerful works of
literature. They can be used to teach or reinforce all the aspects
of literary analysis, personal response, and introspection that are
a part of even the most advance reading and writing curriculum
(
Rakow 49
).

There are seminal works of YA literature such as Robert
Cormier's
The Chocolate War,
a book
that continues to have a profound impact on many readers. For
example the students in an AP English class taught by Tim McGee saw
in Cormier's novel vivid images and heard "in modern language the
eternal dilemma of whether one should stand up and live the just
life or rule through force and fear" (
McGee
58). Because he knows there are works such as those by Cormier that
deal with the eternal questions of life using language that is
thought-provoking in its imagery, McGee says YA novels have been
ignored long enough. His assertion about AP teachers applies to
many others: "What we have done in the guise of preserving
the best literature has in fact silenced a strong and
intellectually stimulating alternative to the common AP English
canon" (
57
).

For several years, I have studied multiple works classified as
young adult literature to explore this significant aspect of
literary merit, specifically the picture and sounds evoked by the
author's crafting of language. I have also looked closely at what
authors of these works say about their use of metaphoric language,
which is one way to create images in writing. Robert Cormier, for
example, declares that he is terrible at landscapes, so he uses
similes and metaphors. I have also explored with young readers what
pictures and sounds remain after they have finished reading a book.
Works such as
The Chocolate War
touches all the senses: pictures of the shadows of the goal posts
that resemble a network of crosses, empty crucifixes, the grotesque
faces of the other football players coming at Jerry, Archie's black
box; the sounds of Room 19 falling apart, the ringing phone, the
voices Jerry hears; the taste of acid dirt, grass, and gravel; and
the extended imagery of the war-like game. Readers of Walter Dean
Myers Fallen Angels recall the sound of the zipper of the bag used
for a soldier's body, and they see the realism of the devastating
images of war that are contrasted with the extended movie analogy
in the story.

Clearly, there are numerous YA books that are notable examples
of fine literature. These works not only invite readers in, but
they keep teachers from getting into a rut as a consequence of
continuing to teach the same familiar books. Instead, by remaining
active in their reading, teachers who know the fine YA literature
"will not only possess a gradually expanding set of works and the
competency to teach them, but also their mastery of the old works
will be deepened and strengthened" (
Miller
58
). This literature is not a formula-driven fiction that begins
and ends only with the problem, but it is enriched by the best
elements literature can offer -- "an expansive, fully realized
setting; a memorably artful narrative voice; complex and fully
realized characters; and unsparing honesty and candor in use of
language and treatment of material" (
Cart
168
).

Look: It's Amazing What Language Can Do

Reading the highly-acclaimed book
Make
Lemonade
by Virginia Euwer Wolff is like reading a picture.
The protagonist LaVaughn even uses nine metaphors in the first 20
pages to describe her neighborhood, her mother, and her job with
Jolly. Written as 66 prose poems or poetic prose episodes, this
picture of urban poverty with its rich character development,
realism, and hope is an excellent example of imagery in prose. I
have invited readers back into the book by telling them I'm going
to
read
a picture to them. I ask them to draw (or describe)
what they see in one of the two following passages from
Make Lemonade.

Then what he does, he puts my purse on his head, / it's his crown
and I quick understand:
He's King of the Bus, / King of the Bus, / King of the Shoe Bus,
we're all his surrounders, his servants, / The driver is driving us
to the shoe store
because we ordered him to, / back there when I said "There's
our bus."
Jeremy found out, and he's in charge.
I look at Jeremy's king face, / I tell him he can stand up and pull
the string now,
he gives me back his crown to hold while he does his job,
I hoist him to the string, / he makes the bell ring, / we prepare to
unload ourselves,
and he announces to the driver when we leave, / "Get shoes."
"Yes, sir," says the driver, / and the bus makes the air-hissing
sound,
and we're back down on earth / to buy shoes / we can't afford. (
78
)

In these passages, the contrasts of the images are striking and
tell much about the story.

"New seeds for you lemon pot," she tells him.
"These ones are gonna grow," she promises./ like now Jolly
runs nature
and decides which things will live and which will die.
Mr. Jeremy takes his new seeds and he gets a chair / and he
climbs up to the pot
and he puts his fist of seeds over the dirt / and a brief light comes
around him from the window / and he looks just like those picture
books.
Where Mom wears an apron, Dad comes home from work,
and everybody has those NO PROBLEM / looks on their faces,
the worst that could happen, / the cat might tip over the water
dish.
For just a second, Jeremy looks like that. I'm surprised / and I
take a picture of him in my mind for later. / Then everything
goes back to the way it was,
you can smell Jilly's throwup, / there's sticky stuff on the floor,
the dishes are dirty because they ran out of soap, / flies are buzzing
around Jilly's cup
and I go get Jeremy some water for his lemon tree. (
96
)

When listeners hear these passages, they are surprised by what
they see in their mind's eye. They also realize how one aspect of
an image leads to another one, revealing the impact of the story.
When students are asked what pictures are left in their minds after
reading the book, they talk about vivid imagery: the astronaut left
unconnected in space; all the dirt and filth; the small lemon seed
and finally the sprouting lemon; the children, Jeremy and Jilly,
described as leaking liquids everywhere; Jolly walking in
"underdrive;" the conversation stool at LaVaughn's house, and the
headless doll "without clothes on, its arm all twisted in a
direction no person could ever reach and beside her leg is her head
/ with happy plastic eyes staring dead at the ceiling" (
133
). The
sounds they hear are also very clearly recalled: the spoon clicking
in an empty jar against voices in the background; Jilly crying as
Jolly says, "I can't do it alone;" and the climatic scene when
Jilly is choking and Jolly says, "Breathe."

There are passages in
Make Lemonade
that are full of sounds. I invite readers to listen:

She caves in and boohoos hard, / an avalanche of her voice /
coming down her legs into my ears / and now I don't know what
to do. / I was gonna leave, go study my math, study my English
/ not to end up like Jolly, / and here I am on the floor
holding her legs in my arms / and she sounds like a choir crying. (
134
).

These words, like notes in music, have tempo, sounds, rhythm,
and texture. This passage can be used to explore two questions that
point to what well-chosen words can do: What do these words sounds
like? What sounds do they evoke? In discussing their answers to
these questions, readers also discuss other aspects of the book,
such as themes of self discovery, family and peer relationships,
and issues about the challenges of teen pregnancy and education.
Although different readers see and hear different things and
sometimes recall varying images evoked by the same words, the craft
of the authors is clearly apparent. When discussing the imagery,
readers see that there is not one correct interpretation of this
outstanding example of literature. In addition, they have an
opportunity to analyze not only the literary merit of the book, but
also their response when they probe why they choose certain
images.

Like
Make Lemonade,
the images in
Trudy Krisher's
Spite Fences
match
the setting and events of the story. We need crayons or colored
pencils to draw a picture from this passage, which is an
interesting interplay of the images Maggie sees as she watches the
horrible scene and of our picture of Maggie courageously "tripping
the shutter":

Everything was out of control. The colors melted
together like a watercolor gone wild: Missy's purple scarf,
Bigger's yellow vest, Virgil's black pants, Cecil's blue
neckerchief. I saw that it didn't matter what side you were on.
When it came to this, it was wrong

Virgil's fist slammed into George Hardy's face. George Hardy
reached to protect his glasses. They had slid to his chin, the
glass shattered into a spider's web a river of red blood
running from his nose. He held his hands to his side, refusing to
fight back. I held the camera to my eye The images before
me swam red, filling up the lens.
Trip the shutter,
Maggie
Pugh.. What filled my lens was more than the blood gushing from my
sweet friend. It was the red color of the fence, the red color of
the earth on which I stood. It was red, the color of my life this
summer.
Cock, Trip.
Red: it was the color of Kinship.
(
271-272
)

There are many colorful scenes in Maggie's story that is set in
Georgia in the early days of the civil rights movement. The issues
of prejudices, family relationships, social consciousness, deep
friendships, and the liberation that comes from art are all made
more powerful by recalling the vivid imagery in the story. The
fully-realized characters come to life in the words that paint
pictures, such as images of the colorful jelly glasses displayed by
Maggie's mama to rescue the family "from the ranks of the
no-account" (
43
) and later hurled at Maggie by her mama.

A Photograph Album in Words

Some authors of YA literature seem to literally paint with
words. Like
Spite Fences,
Shizuko's Daughter,
written by Kyoko Mori, is
full of both literal and figurative photographic images. One
student of mine at Ohio Wesleyan University commented that Mori is
so talented at creating picturesque scenes that he felt like he was
going through an album or a sketchbook as he read her book:

I think that one way this was created was through the
simplicity and bare honesty of the writing So much of the
story was a series of flashbacks. There was usually closure at the
end of each chapter -- a sort of end to each particular event. I
felt like this segmented the book so that you could almost take
each chapter to look at on its own -- like a sketch or photograph.
Together, of course, these fit to complete the story This
was a very visual book. At times I felt like I was watching the
images rather than just reading about them. (Michael's
log)

Clearly as Michael writes about his response to Yuki's story in
Shizuko's Daughter,
he is aware of the
author's craft --
what
she does in her writing and
how
she does it.

As a child Mori had a journal with pictures on half the page and
words on the rest of it. As she grew older, words replaced pictures
--
became
pictures. She knew by third grade that words came
easier to her than lines and angles (
Ehrlich, 146
). Readers see eloquence and beauty in
daily life because of Mori's carefully chosen words as she writes
about Yuki's sense of loss after her mother's suicide. There are
many vivid images readers recall after reading the story: the
colorful flowers from her mother's garden contrasted with the
drabness that characterizes life with her father and stepmother,
the beautiful pottery where no two pieces are ever the same versus
the stepmother's store-bought dishes, the fire burning up all the
boxes of things Yuki's mother saved. When we read Mori's sketchbook
of words about Yuki's sketchbook of pictures, we see how with her
art, Yuki preserves her mother's memory.

"Yuki closed the sketchbook and held it on her lap. My
mother, she thought, wanted to be that blurred heron at the center
of my mind, almost swallowed up by the light around it but always
there. She would want me to look beyond her unhappiness."
(
194
)

Kyoko Mori's work is a fine examples of how writing is beautiful
when it is specific, showing the "significance in the slight" (
Milner & Milner 81
). Her intensely personal
work locates readers in the particular and illustrates how an
authors' use of specificity leads others to understand how the
particulars of one's experience are at the same time universal.
Shizuko's Daughter,
like the books
Make Lemonade
and
Spite
Fences,
gives readers an opportunity to glimpse into
another's world and acknowledge realities other than their own.

All the Senses: See, Hear, Smell, Touch

Gary Paulsen is another fine example of an artist who paints
with words and who writes poetic, lyrical phrases as he tells his
stories. His introduction to
The Winter
Room
is a much-read passage called "Tuning" that shows what
words and readers can do together. He describes the smells, sounds,
and light of old farms such as the "dusty smell of winter hay dried
and stored in the loft the pungent fermented smell of the
chopped corn silage," "the grunting-gassy sounds of the work teams
snorting and slapping as they hit the harness to jerk the stumps
out of the ground," and the "soft gold light -- gold with bits of
hay dust floating in it " (
1-3
). Paulsen reminds us that books
need readers to bring sounds, smell, and light to life, and he
gives us lyrical prose full of vivid imagery to see, hear, smell,
and feel.

Suzanne Fisher Staples' book
Shabanu:
Daughter of the Wind
is another outstanding story told with
beautiful language that touches the senses. One of my students
wrote that it was hard for her to put into words the many things
that kept her tuned into the book. "But one scene in which the
words and description in the story came to life was the sand storm.
During reading, my body dried up and all I could think about was
water." Both the sounds of the words Staples chooses as she tells
the story and what we hear as Shabanu describes sounds she hears
are noteworthy. We hear when Dadi chants softly in his wood-smoke
voice and when Shabanu hears sobbing, "as if from a great distance,
and my knees crumple. Dadi catches me in his arms and buries his
face against my bloody tunic. He holds me against him, and through
a haze of pain, I realize it is Dadi sobbing, not me" (
240
).

Staples' carefully chosen figurative language shows what the
craft of writing can be. In her work there are many examples of the
power of metaphor and simile, for example: "I know without a doubt
that my heart is crumbling up inside me like a burning piece of
paper" (
62
). Readers probably have not owned a camel, but they feel
Shabanu's loss when her Dadi sells her beloved, dancing camel,
Guluband, and later when the young camel Mithoo is injured
following her as she runs away in an attempt to escape from an
arranged marriage. Recurring passages contain the painful imagery:
"But at the center of my self is an aching hole. With Guluband, my
joy, my freedom, all of who I am has gone. I wonder if I will even
take pleasure in anything again" (
63
). "But the dull ache around
the hole where my heart used to be leaves me drained of all energy"
(
65
). "Like Guluband, I have been betrayed and sold. And Mithoo,
like me, has lost her greatest gift by wanting to follow his heart"
(
239
).

Readers' personal responses to the many powerful passages in
this well-told story can lead to their understanding of the
literary elements: the conflicts and events of the plot, the family
relationships, and the developing identity of a young woman who
wonders "which I is I" in the midst of the cultural expectations of
the nomadic people in contemporary Pakistan.

Like
Shabanu,
the striking book of
historical fiction
Out of the Dust
is
full of vivid imagery that fits the time and place of the story.
Set in the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma during 1934-35, this stunning
literary work immerses reader into the struggles of
fourteen-year-old Billie Jo as she must learn to forgive her
family, nature, and herself for the dire circumstances of her life.
With a strong first-person voice and written as free verse entries,
like diary entries in unrhymed verse, the book is full of vivid
images of the relentless, killing dust that is a stark contrast to
the beauty of Ma's living apple tree.
Out of
the Dust
is full of life, death, desperation, hope, and
sounds, especially the music of Billie Jo's piano playing:

When I point my fingers at the keys, / The music
springs straight out of me. / Right hand
playing notes sharp as / tongues, / telling stories while the / smooth
buttery rhythms back me up / on the left.
Folks sway in the / Palace aisles / grinning and stomping and /
out of breath,
and the rest, eyes shining, / fingers snapping, / feet tapping. It's
the best / I've even felt,
playing hot piano, / sizzling with / Mad Dog, / swinging with the
Black Mesa Boys,
or on my own, / crazy, / pestering the keys.
That is / heaven / How supremely / heaven / playing piano / can
be.
January 1934 (
14
).

This passage is full of imagery -- the sounds, pictures,
movement -- evoked by the tempo, rhythm, sounds, and texture of the
well-chosen words. Appreciating the art, the aesthetics of this
incredible book should certainly be as important as discussions
about the historical facts and the rich thematic material in the
story.

Analyzing and Understanding Personal Response

Milner & Milner suggest that teachers build on readers'
personal responses to discussions that, as members of an
interpretive community, will increase their understanding of the
literature and can lead to appreciation and analysis of the
author's craft. Yet because, "for too long, literature study meant
only an analysis of literary terminology and authorial craft,"
teachers must "move carefully here " to help readers "appreciate
literature in deeper, more nuanced, and more enduring ways" (
Milner 85
).

Stories written by Bruce Brooks are outstanding examples of
works that teachers can use to guide young people's more thoughtful
consideration of literature that begins in personal response and
grows more studied as they come to appreciate what an author's
craft can be. Michael Cart says Brooks is a writer whose work
"demonstrates integrity and offers wisdom, art, and enjoyment, . .
.a novelists of ideas [and] a rare stylist thanks to
his uncanny ear for voice and his gift for powerful imagery and
unforgettable simile and metaphor" (
Cart 253,
257
).

In Brooks' first novel
The Moves Make the
Man,
readers hear and feel many sounds that are evoked by
the words of the first-person narration of precocious Jerome
Foxworthy. His descriptions of the game of basketball are
particularly vivid: "from five hundred feet away you can feel it in
the bottoms of your feet rumbling through the floors: bammata
bammata bammata bam, twenty dudes dribbling those balls on that old
gymnasium wood "(
12
). Jerome also loves his beautiful Momma
whose skin is "such a nice coffee color with a little bit of milk,
set off and made to glow by the light blue dress" (
234
). As they
work together to prepare a meal for his friend Bix, Jerome and his
momma have a "flour fight" and they fill the kitchen with
sound:

After we put the bird in to cook, we sang: In the oven,
the mighty oven, the chicken bakes tonight to the tune of The
Lion Sleeps, my favorite song, all the way through with new words
and very funny, Momma surprising me by knowing the whole tune and
even when to stick in the Bawoomawetts. (
231
)

Brooks' work shows how carefully-chosen words can produce
effects, because he thinks about what feelings his words will evoke
in readers' minds. He feels that students learn to analyze
literature as they look at the effects it produces and see what on
the page has led to a specific image, idea, or feeling.

Jerome's story, as he tells about his friend Bix, is filled with
sensory details: the feel of number three pencils all sharp and
dark green enamel (
3
), the smell of a well-oiled baseball glove
(
9
), the "flash thrown by Spin Light out in the middle of black
above and around" (
170
), the picture of "those huge catalpa trees
wearing long bean earrings" (
14
), and the sound of Bix'
mentally-ill mother whose wild scream, "BIIIIXXXX" echoes in
readers' ears (
273
). A student of mine responded to aspects of
Brooks' vivid imagery by writing about the effect of distinct
colors and the ideas she had after reading
The
Moves Make the Man:

Too often in America, we have an image of the perfect
family being of an eggshell hue Bruce Brooks makes us look at
the reality that some acorn-colored people are better off than
pearly tinted ones. We see a young Jerome Foxworthy succeed though
he was the only dark child in an all light school Jerome was
not phased when the porcelain basketball coach at school would not
let him play on the school team. He was not upset when a
mean-spirited hamburger vendor kicked him out of his eating
establishment because the color of his skin was too much like
coffee without any cream.

Other students have found passages in Brooks'
Midnight Hour Encores
particularly vivid. For example,
when Sib Spooner, a sixteen-year-old world class cellist, asks her
father Taxi to show her some horses, he takes to the coast.
Awakened at dawn, she suddenly notices that:

the pounding of the surf is getting louder from a
specific direction, the way a secondary theme sneaks into melody
from the violas in an orchestra. And when I look in that direction,
off to my left, instead of surf I see a sudden wild spray of
beautiful monsters from Mars swirl out from behind a dune,
gracefully rolling toward me, not snorting or shivering but just
running, running on the flat beach beneath me, splashing in the
edges of the tide and emptying those little pools with a single
stroke of a hoof. (
5-6
)

The vivid imagery in Brooks' writing shows what the craft of
writing can be. The particular pictures and sounds he evokes fit
other parts of the book showing how the style, form, and content of
an artistic work are all integral to the work as a whole and not
entirely separable from each other.

Reading to Write -- Writing to Read

Students, such as those in Linda Rief's classroom, who study
works of the highest quality learn to read like a writer, which in
turn helps them write like a reader. Because she knows that
what
she and her students read together matters, Rief uses
writing that is vivid and imaginative, YA literature such as
Shabanu, Out of the Dust,
and
The
Giver,
works that bring visually rich images to mind. She
asks students to write down passages that really make them see,
think, and feel something, to sketch what they see, and they to
write out what the passages and sketch bring to mind (
37
). She
understands Eisner's statement that "knowing how forms will
function within the finished final product is a necessary condition
for creating products that themselves possess aesthetic qualities.
Such knowing requires an active and intelligent maker" (
36
), one
who has the opportunity to experience and appreciate what is
aesthetic, because "what we are able to see or hear is a product of
our cultivated abilities (
Eisner 34
).

For much of the year, students in Rief's class choose the books
they read. However, she also knows the value of reading a novel as
a whole class to "pull apart layers of meaning"(
68
) and to learn
about multiple or alternate ideas from interactions with other
readers. Rief chooses YA literature that is an example of what
Eisner, in discussing the work of Barbara Tuchman, explains as the
quality that makes literature literary:

it is the use of form, especially in the cadence and
tempo of language, that patterns are established among the "parts"
of the sentence and between the sentence and the paragraph that
create their counterpart in the reader's experience [It is]
the generation in the reader's mind's eye of an array of visual
images. The writing is vivid because it is designed to elicit
images The language is shaped to help us see and feel and hence to know it as participants. Its form and content
transport us to another time, another place. The literary in
literature resides in the aesthetic capacities of language to
influence our experience. (
33-34
)

One example of such a literary work is Katherine Paterson's
Lyddie,
a work Rief wanted the students
to respond to in more than a personal way. She "wanted them to go
several steps farther, analyzing and understanding their responses
to the story" (
68
).

Following Rief's guidelines, students look for specific things
to note in their books or in their journals as they read
Lyddie,
including metaphors and similes that
describe situations, places, or people and descriptions that stick,
bringing things to mind for them (
69
). Rief reads with the students
and often starts the day with a passage she finds significant in
content or style (
70
). Her choice of Paterson's story about Lyddie,
the "little chip of Vermont granite" (
51
), is most appropriate,
because it is full of figurative language, vivid imagery that fits
the particular events, characterization, setting, and tone of the
work: "Envy crept up like a noxious vine. Lyddie snapped it off,
but the roots were deep and beyond her reach"(
13
). "Lyddie could
feel the rage oozing up like sap on a March morning"(
20
). "She was
his real family. More than their mother, really, who had shucked
them off like corn husks to follow her craziness"(
37
).

At the beginning of the story, Lyddie stares down a bear that
breaks into the Vermont farm cabin where she and her poor,
frightened mama, brother, and sisters live. The image of a bear
becomes a symbol that represents all the obstacles Lyddie must
conquer. In an effort to earn enough money to save the family's
farm, Lyddie goes to work in the textile factories in Lowell,
Massachusetts. The din of the looms seems like a
beastly
racket to her. She becomes "perfectly tuned to the roaring,
clattering beasts in her care. Think of them as bears she'd tell
herself. Great, clumsy bears. You can face down bears" (
97
). Lyddie
learns that the bear she had thought for many years was outside
herself was instead "in her own narrow spirit. She would stare down
all the bears!" (
181
).
Lyddie
is full
of vivid pictures of poverty and working conditions, and it raises
many issues about literacy, slavery, and family relationships, and
personal challenges. Most of all it is a well-told story based on
Paterson's careful historical research.

Extending our Notions of Literacy

The careful guidance students in Linda Rief's language arts
class received while reading and writing
Lyddie,
led to their research about the textile mills
during the Industrial Revolution. Rief then worked with the music
teacher to guide students as they created an original musical based
on Paterson's historical fiction. Rief knows that for many
students, "school is as jarring as those mills"(
78
). She feels
teachers must help students "find meaningful, purposeful, enriching
ways of learning" by offering them opportunities for responding to
story. "Some write, some sing, some listen; they all read. And
pushing their thinking beyond personal immediate responses, helps
them understand not only themselves, but others" (
78
). These
students are invited, encouraged, and taught to see and hear what
the words they read and write can produce, and they in turn
represent what they learn in many different artistic formats.
Because she knows that many students think in visual images, not in
words, she helps them use words, voices, and pictures to make sense
of their worlds, to extend the literacy spectrum. They clearly
participate
in the literary works they read and the art they
produce.

It is important to note that Linda Rief does not have students
create a musical every year, nor is it necessary for teachers to
plan elaborate units based on every novel they use in the
classroom. However, it is important to realize what can be done
with powerful works of YA literature, works with substantive ideas
and imaginative, perceptive, beautifully-crafted writing.

Because the aesthetic is inherent in our need to make sense of
experience, as Eisner reminds us, young people need opportunities
to read and write about YA literature with vivid imagery. They need
the chance to study how writers create their works. Ralph Fletcher
reminds us that writers love words, and words are writers' tools.
Some writers begin with emotion. Others, such as Sue Ellen Bridgers
begin with an image of a very specific character or scene, as if
the person were sitting in the backseat of her car. For her "that
first image is always spontaneous, an act of discovery that occurs
at a moment of heightened sensitivity" (
4
). She then writes in a
form that seems to best capture the emotions she feels, that
expresses most clearly the character she must unveil to others
(
5
).

Whether writers begin with images or emotion, they "must use
words to communicate the story/image/emotion Writers love
their language" (
Fletcher 32
). And choosing
fine literature with language that evokes vivid imagery, such as
the many fine works of YA literature, reflects an understanding
that people at different points in their lives are more fitted for
some art experiences than for others. Our goal must be to help
young people know individual works aesthetically. Understanding and
appreciating the aesthetic as a way of knowing is essential for all
of our students who, when they have opportunities to participate in
a work, learn to discriminate between aesthetic experiences that
are rich and those that are not. The approaches we select in order
to reach this goal are conditioned by the students, and the work,
and ourselves (
Miller 60
). As we choose works
of YA literature to use with our students, we can evaluate them by
asking questions used to assess the value of reading any piece of
literature: "do they offer wisdom -- or knowledge, at least, which
is the beginning of wisdom; are they artfully written; are they
successful in aesthetic terms; and are they entertaining?" (
Cart 251
). It is not the classification of a
literary work that should be our concern, but whether it has the
capacity to work its way into our thinking. Our view of what young
adult literature is and how it creates its impact is expanded when
we explore the vivid imagery in these works and the varied
responses of many readers who have the opportunity to become more
visually and verbally literature and acquire aesthetic ways of
knowing.

Author

Dr. Connie S. Zitlow is an associate professor at
Ohio Wesleyan University where she teaches courses in young adult
literature and content area reading and also directs the secondary
teacher education program. She is currently enjoying her additional
role as President of ALAN.